


Daughter of Suns

by damalur



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 10:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13121439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: "Even stars burn out" (c) Matthew Stover.Lotte made me post this even though it's awful.





	Daughter of Suns

**Author's Note:**

> "Even stars burn out" (c) Matthew Stover. 
> 
> Lotte made me post this even though it's awful.

The Falcon’s hold was littered bulkhead-to-bulkhead with sleeping bodies: Finn slumped beneath Rose with Poe flat on his back beside him, Nien Nunb slouched over the game console, Kaydel Connix curled in a knot beside the comm suite. Rey was the only one awake, although she sensed Leia and Chewie in the cockpit, talking quietly; Leia felt sad, warm, comforted. Rey’s sense of her put her in the pilot’s couch.

It was the lightsaber that troubled her. She knew a little of its history, and sensed more of the weight of it, but now it was cracked in two, exposing the blue kyber crystal within, and how was she supposed to fight the First Order with _this?_ How was she supposed to fight at _all?_ It had been the height of hubris, thinking she could bring Ben back from the brink when his family had failed —

And then a hand settled lightly over the knot of her fingers and the lightsaber, and Luke Skywalker said, “I owe you an apology.”

Rey jerked back. He was right there beside her, a white fountain in the Force that blazed just like his sister; but there was something faded about him, like she was viewing him from a great distance. He was limned in blue.

“Master Skywalker! But you’re — “

“Luke,” he said. “Just Luke.”

"I felt it, though — in the Force, when you…"

"I said there was more to it than lifting rocks" — his mouth twitched — "although I hear that comes in handy, too." He drew away from her and stood, picking his way across the deck to the console where Artoo was in standby mode. He was dressed in black, and his hair was sun-bleached and shaggy. "But we were talking about apologies."

"I thought I could… bring him back," Rey said. "Turn him. But he wasn't… he didn't want to be saved."

"It's amazing how often people are blind to what's best for them," Master Skywalker — Luke — Master Luke — said. "And I didn't mean you should apologize to me. I meant that _I_ should apologize to _you."_

"You were right, though. It didn't go at all the way I thought — "

"That happens, Rey," he said. "The future… it's always in motion. It doesn't mean you were wrong to try."

"What was he like?" she asked. "Ben, I mean. Before."

"He was a bright spot," Luke said. "For all of us. Funny — he had Han's sense of humor. Quiet, although I'm not sure where that came from. Leia's outspoken, and Han is…" He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Well, you met Han."

"Was he a good student?"

"He was," Luke said, "a better student than I was teacher. Stubborn, too. Can't imagine why." He touched the top of Artoo's domed head with the fingers of his right hand and then came back to sit beside her. "He called me 'Uncle'," Luke said. "Always 'Uncle Luke' this and 'Uncle Luke' that. He was so curious. Half the time I didn't have answers for his questions, but Ben kept on asking." 

"And now he's gone."

"No, Rey," Luke said. "No one's ever really gone. A long, long time ago, I hung my life on the belief that my father could be saved even though everyone thought I was crazy. Including," he added, "my own masters. After what I did to Ben, I'll never be the one who can bring him back to the light, but that doesn't mean he's lost forever."

"He is," Rey said, and her voice was suddenly thick with tears — she hated it, that she was wasting any thought at all on Ben Solo, who had killed by the thousands, who had killed _his own father_ , who saw the death of the monster who had caused so much destruction not as a release but as an opportunity. "I _felt_ it, that blackness, all twisted up inside of him." She shuddered.

"Cold?"

Rey sniffed. "Yes."

"It's always cold out here," Luke said. "We have sun in our bones. Even if you don't miss the desert, your body never forgets it."

She remembered: Tatooine. "I liked the rain on the island."

"I did, too." He sighed. "That was my second mistake, after failing Ben — I cut myself off from the Force. From my family, from my life. From trying to correct my failures."

"It must have been awful," Rey said. "I can't imagine how much I would have to hurt, to want to shut myself off like that." Ben was a raw wound in the Force, always bleeding, never closed, but even he remained as open and porous to the rush of the Force as some teeming green plant turning towards the sun. "You said the dark was part of the Force, but what I felt in him was…" She didn't have the words for it. _"Rot."_

"The dark," Luke said, "is part of the Force, because the Force is everything. But we, living beings, Jedi — we are rooted in the light. What Snoke and Ben are is a corruption of all that the Force encompasses, because they use its power to serve themselves."

"Why?"

"Because they're afraid," Luke said. "That's the core of every Sith, every dark side acolyte: fear. Even stars burn out. The dark side isn't the dark of death that feeds new life, the violence that comes with the struggle to survive. It's the dark of destruction and hatred and despair."

 _Even stars burn out._ If that was what drove Ben, then maybe he really was beyond all hope. "But how can you fight that?" she asked. "If the universe is just some blind, black hole — " It wasn't, though, it _couldn't be;_ every fiber of her rejected the notion.

And then Luke said, "Love."

"...Love?"

"Love keeps back the dark," Luke said. "Compassion. Kindness. _Hope._ And that, Rey from nowhere, is why I'm sorry. You came to me looking for a teacher, and instead all you found was a foolish old man who had lost his faith. Can you forgive me?"

"I — of course, Master Skywalker — "

"Luke."

"Master Luke."

"We'll work on it."

"We will?"

"If you're going to be a Jedi," Luke said, "you should listen to your master." A moment of consideration, and then he added, "Sometimes."

"But I thought you said there shouldn't be any more Jedi."

"Funny, that's the first time I've ever been wrong. No, Rey — you'll be a Jedi, but a new kind of Jedi, because you'll take the wisdom from our legacy and leave the rest behind. What a Jedi needs isn't tradition or rules or codes. A Jedi needs only trust in the Force."

"I can't do it alone," she said. "It feels as though I barely left Jakku yesterday, and now... if I have to face Ben again — "

"You won't be alone," he said. "The Force will always be with you. And so will your friends… and so will I."

"I don't want to fight him," she confessed. "I should hate him, but I don't."

"You aren't beholden to him. Your path, Rey, is your own."

"I know," she said. 

He nodded. "As long as you know."

"But I _can_ save him," Rey said.

"I believe you," said Luke.


End file.
